Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
euangelion
Gospel. In ordinary Greek it was the announcement of a royal victory or an emperor's accession.
Mark 1:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Breaking news. A phrase that belongs to broadcasting, not to religion. Now imagine a religious movement adopting it as its central term.
Because the word arrived in Christian use already carrying imperial associations, and hearing it as a religious term only removes the political edge the first readers could not miss.
Every version reads gospel or good news. Both are majority renderings depending on the version.
εὐαγγέλιον euangelion · G2098
Euangelion is a good announcement, used in the Roman world for news of a military victory or the birth or accession of an emperor. The Priene inscription uses it of Augustus.
English gospel is now exclusively religious and carries none of the public, political register the Greek had.
A New Testament word that also turns up in Roman imperial inscriptions is not a coincidence; the overlap is the point. The vocabulary was borrowed, and borrowing is a claim.
Gospel and good news are both standard; good news is increasingly the majority in newer versions.
- The Priene calendar inscription applying euangelion to Augustus
- Isaiah 52:7 and 61:1 in the Septuagint use the verb form
- Mark 1:1 opens with the noun
